Categories

Meta

For those of you in the southern hemisphere winter is upon us now which will mean a lot less surfing. Even if the weather is still good where you are there are a few things you can do to stay fit between surfing. Here in this article, we’ll outline some great exercises that will keep you fit during downtime and help take your surfing to the next level. And if you’re really serious about surfing, consider getting a personal trainer. You’ll see better results a lot quicker when you invest in your own trainer.

Surfing is a beautiful sport. It incorporates a great mix of strength, power, fluidity, speed, flexibility and endurance. All this puts a lot of demand on you which is part of the appeal to many surfers. As with any sport if you expect to stay good and get better you must bring some extra workouts into it besides the sport itself. Read on to see what you can do to stay on top of your game.

Since surfing incorporates your entire body you’ll need to give all parts their due. It’s also a good idea to assess your current level of fitness and track yourself as you go.

Do a proper warm up before every surf session

To prevent excessive muscle soreness, do some limbering up before you get in the water. This will loosen up your muscles for the strenuous activity ahead. This will help prevent injuries and keep you fresh for the next day’s surfing.

Core strength

Your core should receive plenty of attention as it controls most of your muscles and will aid your balance. Core training can be easily done without any equipment. Those being the front plank and indo press-up. The more advanced techniques will require the use of exercise equipment like medicine balls or Swiss balls.

Upper body

Without good upper body strength, you’ll never be able to paddle enough for those bigger waves. In surfing, you use your arms for just about everything, paddling against walls of white water, paddling into waves and then the strength to push yourself up on the board. Dumbbell training is great for this along with any other weight lifting.

Lower body

You’ll need good lower body strength if you hope to hold your balance, make big turns and hold out on those longer waves. Exercises for lower body don’t require much equipment. Start with squats and lunges. You can then move on to balance boards.

Swim training

Swimming should never be left out of your exercise routine. It will not only build your confidence in the water but also train all the muscle groups mentioned above. If you’re short on time for training then perhaps you can skimp on other exercises but you must swim regularly.

Aerobic training

While not as good as swimming, you should still incorporate some aerobic exercises into your routine like running and cycling. This will condition your heart and lungs giving you more breath and building endurance.

Pre-workout supplements will increase your energy levels, muscle power and endurance. They contain multiple ingredients that will help you achieve them. Some of the most common pre-workout ingredients are caffeine, creatine and beta-alanine. But we are not going to talk about them in this article. What we are going to discuss are the best pre-workout supplements for surfers. Here they are:

Protein & Carbs – eat whole-food meal about an hour or an hour and a half before surfing followed by a pre-workout protein shake containing of about 25 to 50 grams of protein. The amount of protein depends on your body weight. This will allow you to accumulate enough energy to fuel you before surfing, especially if you’re going to the extremes. In addition to that, take carbs in a 1:1 ration with protein. This will allow your body to release insulin which will improve nutrient delivery to muscle tissues.

Beta-Alanine – this is an amino acid that will boost your muscular strength and endurance. This is achieved by increasing the body’s carnosine levels. This will allow you to have longer surfing endurance and thus will improve your surfing levels by being able to train for extended periods.

BCAAs – a group of amino acids which contains leucine, isoleucine and valine. As soon as you take them in, they are immediately absorbed by your body and directly goes into your working muscles without needing to pass through the liver. The result? Instant energy boost.

Raspberry Ketones – a rising trend for increasing fat burning capability of the body is the raspberry ketones. This is a chemical found from red raspberries and they are known to increase metabolic rates and fat release. Take this if you want to burn down your fats down to the last bit.

Green Coffee Bean Extract – a popular fat burner that contains high levels of chlorogenic acid. It works with caffeine in releasing and burning body fat. They are unroasted coffee beans and they possess significantly higher levels of chlorogenic acids compared to roasted ones.

Tyrosine – an amino acid that improves your mood and focus – useful for surfing especially on an uneven ocean waves. This will allow you to improve your mind and body coordination, a very useful thing when surfing. It has a bonus feature that will boost your sex drive.

Choline – the backbone of the nervous system neurotransmitter, choline will improve mind and muscle coordination, resulting in better performance during surfing. In addition to that, it will improve your memory and help you maintain better phosphatidylcholine levels – an important structural building block of a living cell.